Penelope Todd

Up by the bootstraps

Relics from last week’s walk

Been thinking about thoughts and feelings this weekend. How they feed one another and how much say we have in the direction they take us. Yesterday I woke with the blahs: what on earth am I doing with my days which seem to be running together like watercolours with a wet brush dragged through them? Where’s my enthusiasm for the direction I’ve chosen? Have I taken a wrong turn, and lost the path of Greater Altruism? What about the writing (where is it)? Do I actually like the people I live with? Are we dragging one another down? I mean, why get out of bed today? …

You get my drift? Downwards. Muddy thoughts, murky feelings, running together.

I picked up the little book I pick up (when I remember) at times like this.

Stop it. That’s the basic message. Act. Do something, anything. Remind yourself of your capabilities, and that incapacity starts in the mind. And so does vast capacity. I guess that for someone else the best message would be opposite: go and wallow in a hot bath. Book a ticket to Hyderabad. Meditate and merge with the cosmos. Anyway. Acting works for me. Act by act.

Chopped wood. Dusted the innermost reaches of the bedroom. Said yes when a friend asked me out. Went out.

What I’ve taken for my current vocation took on its former glow of possibility. My housemates improved out of sight. Simple soul that I am, I got happy.

Penelope

9 responses to “Up by the bootstraps”

  3. p.s. Isabel, I just read your post ‘Politics in Exile-land’ and add, there’s no need to say where. I get the idea.

  4. Thanks, Melissa. I’m talking low-grade (as in lightish, mundane) murk here. I know there are darknesses with which I’ve never contended, or been more than brushed by. I bow to you who knit glorious poems and prose in, or out of, your dark places.

  5. Phew — glad you recognised the gumleaf, Prue. I wonder what it is about a drawing that’s more satisfying than a photo, which includes so much more information. (Or does it?)
    The condition of my housemates is a state of mind (mine). They are generally on even keels and benign.

  6. Hmm, Sundays. There was often a melancholy attached to the evenings — hangover from school days, in my case, I think. In fact, this week Saturday was gloomday and Sunday better. But then, I’m a ‘Sunday’s child’.
    But where in the ME are you Isabel? Mystery person.

  7. Lovely drawings, Pen, are an act, aren’t they? But I know that murk, that mud, and I lose my grip on all the good advice I’d give myself if it weren’t quite so dark. Brava, anyway, Pen. I am so enjoying coming to your blog and finding a new watercolor to savor. xo

  8. Nice gumleaf: I’m sure that your gorgeous drawings provide satisfaction. Housemates require a higher toleration factor.